BOOK VII[1]

I go to see my mother--Saint-Malo--Progress of the Revolution--My

marriage--Paris--Old acquaintances and new--The Abbé

Barthélemy--Saint-Ange--The theatres--Changes in Paris--The

Club des Cordeliers--Marat--Danton--Camille Desmoulins--Fabre

d'Églantine--M. de Malesherbes' opinion on the emigration--I play

and lose--Adventure of the hackney-coach--Madame Roland--Barère at

the Hermitage--Second Federation of the 14th of July--Preparations

for the emigration--I emigrate with my brother--Adventure of

Saint-Louis--We cross the frontier--Brussels--Dinner at the Baron

de Breteuil's--Rivarol--Departure for the army of the Princes--The

journey--I meet the Prussian army--I arrive at Trèves--The Army of the

Princes--A Roman amphitheatre--_Atala_--The shirts of Henry IV.--A

soldier's life--Last appearance of old military France--Commencement of

the siege of Thionville--The Chevalier de La Baronnais--Continuation

of the siege--A contrast--Saints in the woods--Battle of Bouvines--A

patrol--An unexpected encounter--Effects of a cannon-ball and a

shell--Market in camp--Night amid piled arms--The Dutch dog--A

recollection of the _Martyrs_--The nature of my company--With the

outposts--Eudora--Ulysses--Passage of the Moselle--A fight--Libba, the

deaf and dumb girl--Assault of Thionville--The siege is raised--We

enter Verdun--The Prussian evil--The retreat--Smallpox--The

Ardennes--The Prince de Ligne's baggage-wagons--The women of Namur--I

meet my brother at Brussels--Our last farewell--Ostend--I take

passage for Jersey--I land at Guernsey--The pilot's wife--Jersey--My

uncle de Bedée and his family--Description of the island--The Duc de

Berry--Lost friends and relations--The misfortune of growing old--I go

to England--Last meeting with Gesril.

I wrote to my brother in Paris giving him particulars of my crossing,

telling him the reasons for my return, and asking him to lend me the

money wherewith to pay my passage. My brother answered that he had

forwarded my letter to my mother. Madame de Chateaubriand did not keep

me waiting: she enabled me to clear my debt and to leave the Havre.

She told me that Lucile was with her, also my uncle de Bedée and his

family. This intelligence persuaded me to go to Saint-Malo, so that I

might consult my uncle on the question of my proposed emigration.

Revolutions are like rivers: they grow wider in their course; I found

that which I had left in France enormously swollen and overflowing its

banks: I had left it with Mirabeau under the "Constituent," I found it

with Danton[2] under the "Legislative[3]" Assembly.

The Treaty of Pilnitz, of the 27th of August 1791, had become known in

Paris. On the 14th of December 1791, while I was being tossed by the

storms, the King announced that he had written to the Princes of the

Germanic Body, and in particular to the Elector of Trèves, touching

the German armaments. The brothers of Louis XVI., the Prince de Condé,

M. de Calonne, the Vicomte de Mirabeau, and M. de Laqueville[4] were

almost immediately impeached. As early as the 9th of November, a

previous decree had been hurled against the other Emigrants: it was to

enter these ranks, already proscribed, that I was hastening; others

might perhaps have retreated, but the threats of the stronger have

always made me take the side of the weaker: the pride of victory is

unendurable to me.

On my way from the Havre to Saint-Malo I was able to observe the

divisions and misfortunes of France: the country-seats were burnt

and abandoned; the owners, to whom distaffs had been sent, had left;

the women were living sheltered in the towns. The hamlets and small

market-towns groaned under the tyranny of clubs affiliated to the

central Club des Cordeliers, since amalgamated with the Jacobins. The

antagonist of the latter, the Société Monarchique, or des Feuillants,

no longer existed; the vulgar nickname of _sans-culotte_ had become

popular; the King was never spoken of save as "Monsieur Veto" or

"Monsieur Capet."

[Sidenote: My marriage.]

I was tenderly welcomed by my mother and my family, although they

deplored the inopportune moment which I had selected for my return.

My uncle, the Comte de Bedée, was preparing to go to Jersey with his

wife, his son, and his daughters. It was a question of finding money to

enable me to join the Princes. My American journey had made a breach

in my fortune; my property was reduced to almost nothing, where my

younger son's portion was concerned, through the suppression of the

feudal rights; and the benefices that were to accrue to me by virtue of

my affiliation to the Order of Malta had fallen, with the remainder of

the goods of the clergy, into the hands of the nation. This conjuncture

of circumstances decided the most serious step in my life: my family

married me in order to procure me the means of going to get killed in

support of a cause which I did not love.

There was living in retirement, at Saint-Malo, M. de Lavigne[5], a

knight of Saint-Louis, and formerly Commandant of Lorient. The Comte

d'Artois had stayed with him there when he visited Brittany: the Prince

was charmed with his host, and promised to grant him any favour he

might at any time demand. M. de Lavigne had two sons: one of them[6]

married Mademoiselle de La Placelière. Two daughters, born of this

marriage, were left orphans on both sides at a tender age. The elder

married the Comte du Plessix-Parscau[7], a captain in the Navy, the

son and grandson of admirals, himself to-day a rear-admiral, a red

ribbon[8] and commander of the corps of naval cadets at Brest; the

younger[9] was living with her grandfather, and was seventeen years of

age when I arrived at Saint-Malo on my return from America. She was

white, delicate, slender and very pretty: she wore her beautiful fair

hair, which curled naturally, hanging low like a child's. Her fortune

was valued at five or six hundred thousand francs.

My sisters took it into their heads to make me marry Mademoiselle de

Lavigne, who had become greatly attached to Lucile. The affair was

managed without my knowledge. I had seen Mademoiselle de Lavigne three

or four times at most; I recognised her at a distance on the "Furrow"

by her pink pelisse, her white gown and her fair hair blown out by

the wind, when I was on the beach abandoning myself to the caresses

of my old mistress, the sea. I felt myself to possess none of the

good qualities of a husband. All my illusions were alive, nothing was

spent within me; the very energy of my existence had doubled through

my travels. I was racked by the muse. Lucile liked Mademoiselle de

Lavigne, and saw the independence of my fortune in this marriage:

"Have your way!" said I.

In me the public man is inflexible; the private man is at the mercy of

whomsoever wishes to seize hold of him, and, to save myself an hour's

wrangling, I would become a slave for a century.

The consent of the grandfather, the paternal uncle and the principal

relatives was easily obtained: there remained to be overcome the

objections of a maternal uncle, M. de Vauvert[10], a great democrat,

who opposed the marriage of his niece with an aristocrat like myself,

who was not one at all. We thought ourselves able to do without him,

but my pious mother insisted that the religious marriage should be

performed by a "non-juror" priest, which could only be done in secret.

M. de Vauvert knew this, and let loose the law upon us, under pretext

of rape and breach of the laws, and pleading the imaginary state of

second childhood into which the grandfather, M. de Lavigne, had fallen.

Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had become Madame de Chateaubriand,

without my having held any communication with her, was taken away in

the name of the law and put into the Convent of Victory at Saint-Malo,

pending the decision of the courts.

There was no rape, breach of the laws, adventure, nor love in the

whole matter; the wedding had only the bad side of a novel: truth.

The case was tried and the court pronounced the marriage civilly

valid. The members of both families being in agreement, M. de Vauvert

abandoned the proceedings. The constitutional clergyman, lavishly

feed, withdrew his protest against the first nuptial benediction, and

Madame de Chateaubriand was released from the convent, where Lucile had

imprisoned herself with her.

It was a new acquaintance that I had to make, and it brought me all

that I could wish. I doubt whether a finer intelligence than my wife's

has ever existed: she guesses the thought and the word about to spring

to the brow or the lips of the person with whom she converses; to

deceive her is impossible. Madame de Chateaubriand has an original and

cultured mind, writes most cleverly, tells a story to perfection, and

admires me without ever having read two lines of my works: she would

dread to find ideas in them that differ from hers, or to discover that

people are not sufficiently enthusiastic over my merit. Although a

passionate judge, she is well-informed and a good judge.

Madame de Chateaubriand's defects, if she have any, proceed from the

superabundance of her good qualities; my own very serious defects

result from the sterility of mine. It is easy to possess resignation,

patience, a general obligingness, equanimity of temper, when one

interests himself in nothing, when one is wearied by everything,

when one replies to good and bad fortune alike with a desperate and

despairing "What does it matter?"

Madame de Chateaubriand is better than I, although less accessible in

her intercourse with others. Have I been irreproachable in my relations

with her? Have I offered my companion all the sentiments which she

deserved and which were hers by right? Has she ever complained? What

happiness has she tasted in reward for her consistent affection? She

has shared my adversities; she has been plunged into the prisons of

the Terror, the persecutions of the Empire, the disgraces of the

Restoration; she has not known the joys of maternity to counterbalance

her sufferings. Deprived of children, which she might perhaps have had

in another union, and which she would have loved madly; having none of

the honours and affections which surround the mother of a family and

console a woman for the loss of her prime, she has travelled, sterile

and solitary, towards old age. Often separated from me, disliking

literature, to her the pride of bearing my name makes no amends. Timid

and trembling for me alone, she is deprived, through her ever-renewed

anxiety, of sleep and of the time to cure her ills: I am her chronic

infirmity and the cause of her relapses. Can I compare an occasional

impatience which she has shown me with the cares which I have caused

her? Can I set my good qualities, such as they are, against her

virtues, which support the poor, which have established the Infirmerie

de Marie-Thérèse in the face of all obstacles? What are my labours

beside the works of that Christian woman? When the two of us appear

before God, it is I who shall be condemned.

Upon the whole, when I consider my nature with all its imperfections,

is it certain that marriage has spoilt my destiny?

I should no doubt have had more leisure and repose; I should have been

better received in certain circles and by certain of the great ones of

this earth; yet in politics, though Madame de Chateaubriand may have

crossed me, she never checked me, for here, as in matters affecting

my honour, I judge only by my own feeling. Should I have produced a

greater number of works if I had remained independent, and would those

works have been any better? Have there not been circumstances, as shall

be seen, in which, by marrying outside France, I should have ceased

to write and disowned my country? If I had not married, would not my

weakness have made me the prey of some worthless creature? Should not

I have squandered and polluted my days like Lord Byron[11]? To-day,

when I am sinking into old age, all my wildness would have passed;

nothing would remain to me but emptiness and regrets: I should be an

old bachelor, unesteemed, either deceived or undeceived, an old bird

repeating my worn-out song to whosoever refused to listen to it. The

full indulgence of my desires would not have added one string more

to my lyre, nor one more earnest note to my voice. The constraint of

my feelings, the mystery of my thoughts have perhaps increased the

forcefulness of my accents, quickened my works with an internal fever,

with a hidden flame, which would have spent itself in the free air

of love. Held back by an indissoluble tie, I purchased at first, at

the cost of a little bitterness, the sweets which I taste to-day. Of

the ills of my existence I have preserved only the incurable part. I

therefore owe an affectionate and eternal gratitude to my wife, whose

attachment has been as touching as it has been profound and sincere.

She has rendered my life more grave, more noble, more honourable, by

always inspiring me with respect for duty, if not always with the

strength to perform it.

I was married at the end of March 1792, and on the 20th of April the

Legislative Assembly declared war against Francis II.[12], who had just

succeeded his father Leopold; on the 10th of the same month Benedict

Labre[13] was beatified in Rome: there you have two different worlds.

The war hurried the remaining nobles out of France. Persecutions were

being redoubled on the one hand; on the other, the Royalists were no

longer permitted to stay at home without being accounted as cowards: it

was time for me to make my way to the camp which I had come so far to

seek. My uncle de Bedée and his family took ship for Jersey, and I set

out for Paris with my wife and my sisters Lucile and Julie.

[Sidenote: We go to Paris.]

We had secured an apartment in the little Hôtel de Villette, in the

Cul-de-Sac Férou, Faubourg Saint-Germain. I hastened in search of

my first friends. I saw the men of letters with whom I had had some

acquaintance. Among new faces I noticed those of the learned Abbé

Barthélemy[14] and the poet Saint-Ange[15]. The abbé modelled the

_gynecœa_ of Athens too closely upon the drawing-rooms at Chanteloup.

The translator of Ovid was not a man without talent; talent is a gift,

an isolated thing: it can come together with other mental faculties,

it can be separated from them. Saint-Ange supplied a proof of this; he

made the greatest efforts not to be stupid, but was unable to prevent

himself. A man whose pencil I admired and still admire, Bernardin de

Saint-Pierre[16], was lacking in intelligence, and unfortunately his

character was on a level with his intelligence. How many pictures in

the _Études de la nature_ are spoilt by the writer's limited mind and

want of elevation of soul.

Rulhière had died suddenly, in 1791[17], before my departure for

America. I have since seen his little house at Saint-Denis, with the

fountain and the pretty statue of Love, at the foot of which one reads

these verses:

D'Egmont avec l'Amour visita cette rive:

Une image de sa beauté

Se peignit un moment sur l'onde fugitive:

D'Egmont a disparu; l'Amour seul est resté[18].

When I left France the theatres of Paris were still ringing with the

_Réveil d'Épiménide_[19], and with this stanza:

J'aime la vertu guerrière

De nos braves défenseurs,

Mais d'un peuple sanguinaire

Je déteste les fureurs.

À l'Europe redoutables,

Soyons libres à jamais,

Mais soyons toujours aimables

Et gardons l'esprit français[20].

When I returned, the _Réveil d'Épiménide_ had been forgotten; and, if

the stanza had been sung, the author would have been badly handled.

_Charles IX._ was now the rage. The popularity of this piece depended

principally upon the circumstances of the time: the tocsin, a nation

armed with poniards, the hatred of the kings and the priests, all these

offered a reproduction between four walls of the tragedy which was

being publicly enacted. Talma, still at the commencement of his career,

was continuing his successes.

While tragedy dyed the streets, the pastoral flourished on the stage;

there was question of little but innocent shepherds and virginal

shepherdesses: fields, brooks, meadows, sheep, doves, the golden age

beneath the thatch, were revived to the sighing of the shepherd's

pipe before the cooing Tirces and the simple-minded knitting-women

who had but lately left that other spectacle of the guillotine. Had

Sanson had time, he would have played Colin to Mademoiselle Théroigne

de Méricourt's[21] Babet. The Conventionals plumed themselves upon

being the mildest of men: good fathers, good sons, good husbands, they

went out walking with the children, acted as their nurses, wept with

tenderness at their simple games; they lifted these little lambs gently

in their arms to show them the "gee-gees" of the carts carrying the

victims to execution. They sang the praises of nature, peace, pity,

kindness, candour, the domestic virtues; these devout philanthropists,

with extreme sensibility, sent their neighbours to have their heads

sliced off for the greater happiness of mankind.

*

[Sidenote: Paris in 1792.]

Paris in 1792 no longer presented the outward aspect of 1789 and 1790:

one saw no longer the budding Revolution, but a people marching drunk

to its destinies, across abysses and by uncertain roads. The appearance

of the people was no longer tumultuous, curious, eager: it was

threatening. In the streets one met none but frightened or ferocious

figures, men creeping along the houses so as not to be seen, or others

seeking their prey: timid and lowered eyes were turned away from you,

or else harsh eyes were fixed on yours in order to sound and fathom you.

All diversity of costume had ceased; the old world kept in the

background; men had donned the uniform cloak of the new world, a

cloak which had become merely the last garment of the future victims.

Already the social license displayed at the rejuvenation of France,

the liberties of 1789, those fantastic and unruly liberties of a state

of things which is engaged in self-destruction and which has not yet

turned to anarchy were levelling themselves beneath the sceptre of the

people; one felt the approach of a plebeian tyranny, fruitful, it is

true, and filled with expectations, but also formidable in a manner

very different from the decaying despotism of the old monarchy: for,

the sovereign people being ubiquitous, when it turns tyrant the tyrant

is ubiquitous; it is the universal presence of an universal Tiberius.

With the Parisian population was mingled an exotic population of

cut-throats from the south; the advance-guard of the Marseillese, whom

Danton was bringing up for the day's work of the 10th of August and the

massacres of September, were recognisable by their rags, their bronzed

complexions, their look of cowardice and crime, but of crime of another

sun: _in vultu vitium._

In the Legislative Assembly there was no one whom I recognised;

Mirabeau and the early idols of our troubles either were no more or had

been hurled from their altars. In order to put together the thread of

history broken by my journey in America, I must trace matters a little

further back.

*

The flight of the King, on the 21st of June 1791, caused the Revolution

to take an immense step forward. Brought back to Paris on the 25th

of that month, he was then dethroned for the first time, since the

National Assembly declared that its decrees would have the force of

law without there being any need of royal sanction or acceptance. A

high court of justice, anticipating the revolutionary tribunal, was

established at Orleans. Thenceforward Madame Roland[22] demanded the

head of the Queen, until such time as her own head should be demanded

by the Revolution. The mob-gathering had taken place in the Champ de

Mars, to protest against the decree which suspended the King from his

functions instead of putting him upon his trial. The acceptance of

the Constitution, on the 14th of September, had no calming effect.

There was a question of declaring the dethronement of Louis XVI.;

had this been done, the crime of the 21st of January would not have

been committed; the position of the French people in relation to the

monarchy and in the eyes of posterity would have been different. The

Constituents who opposed the dethronement thought they were saving the

Crown, whereas they undid it; those who thought to undo it by demanding

the dethronement would have saved it. In politics the result is almost

invariably the opposite of what is foreseen.

On the 30th of that same month of September 1791, the Constituent

Assembly held its last sitting; the imprudent decree of the 17th of May

previous, which prohibited the re-election of the retiring members,

gave birth to the Convention. There is nothing more dangerous, more

inadequate, more inapplicable to general affairs than resolutions

appropriate to individuals or bodies of men, however honourable in

themselves.

The decree of the 29th of September for regulating popular societies

served only to make them more violent. This was the last act of the

Constituent Assembly: it dissolved on the following day, bequeathing to

France a revolution.

*

[Sidenote: The Legislative Assembly.]

The Legislative Assembly, installed on the 1st of October 1791,

revolved within the whirlwind which was about to sweep away the living

and the dead. Troubles stained the departments with blood; at Caen

the people were surfeited with massacres and ate the heart of M. de

Belsunce[23].

The King set his veto to the decree against the Emigrants and to that

which deprived the non-juror ecclesiastics of all emolument. These

lawful acts increased the excitement. Pétion had become Mayor of

Paris[24]. The deputies preferred a bill of impeachment against the

Emigrant Princes on the 1st of January 1792; on the 2nd, they fixed the

commencement of the Year IV. of Liberty on that same 1st of January.

About the 13th of February, red caps were seen in the streets of Paris,

and the municipality ordered pikes to be manufactured. The manifesto

of the Emigrants appeared on the 1st of March. Austria armed. Paris

was divided into more or less hostile sections[25]. On the 20th of

March 1792, the Legislative Assembly adopted the sepulchral piece of

mechanism without which the sentences of the Terror could not have been

executed; it was first tried on dead bodies, so that these might teach

it its trade. One may speak of the instrument as of an executioner,

since persons who were touched by its good services presented it with

sums of money for its support[26]. The invention of the murder-machine,

at the very moment when it had become necessary to crime, is a

noteworthy proof of the intelligence of co-ordinate facts, or rather a

proof of the hidden action of Providence when it proposes to change the

face of empires.

Minister Roland had been summoned to the King's Council at the

instigation of the Girondins[27]. On the 20th of April, war was

declared against the King of Hungary and Bohemia[28]. Marat published

the _Ami du peuple_ in spite of the decree by which he was stricken.

The Royal German Regiment and the Berchiny Regiment deserted.

Isnard[29] spoke of the perfidy of the Court, Gensonné[30] and

Brissot[31] denounced the Austrian Committee. An insurrection broke

out on the subject of the Royal Guard, which was disbanded[32]. On

the 28th of May, the Assembly declared its sittings permanent. On the

20th of June, the Palace of the Tuileries was forced by the mob of

the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, the pretext being the

refusal of Louis XVI. to sanction the proscription of the priests; the

King was in peril of his life. The country was declared in danger.

M. de La Fayette was burnt in effigy. The federates of the second

Federation were arriving; the Marseilleise, called up by Danton, were

on the march: they entered Paris on the 30th of July and were billeted

by Pétion at the Cordeliers.

*

By the side of the national tribune, two competing tribunes had sprung

up: that of the Jacobins and that of the Cordeliers, then the more

formidable because it sent members to the famous Commune of Paris and

supplied it with means of action. If the formation of the Commune had

not taken place, Paris, for want of a point of concentration, would

have split up, and the various mayoralties become rival powers.

[Sidenote: The Club of Cordeliers.]

The Club des Cordeliers had its abode in the monastery, whose church

was built in the reign of St Louis, in 1259[33], with funds paid as

damages for a murder: in 1590 it became the resort of the most famous

Leaguers. Certain places seem to be the laboratories of factions:

"Intelligence was brought," says L'Estoile (12 July 1593), "to the

Duc de Mayenne[34] of two hundred Cordeliers newly arrived in Paris,

supplying themselves with arms and concerting with the Sixteen[35],

who held council daily at the Cordeliers of Paris.... On that day the

Sixteen, assembled at the Cordeliers, cast aside their arms."

The fanatics of the League had therefore handed down the monastery of

the Cordeliers to our philosophical revolutionaries as a dead-house.

The pictures, the carved and painted images, the veils, the curtains

of the convent had been pulled down; the basilica, flayed of its

skin, presented its bare skeleton to the eye. In the apsis of the

church, where the wind and the rain entered through the broken panes

of the rose-windows, some joiners' benches served as a table for the

president, when the sittings were held in the church. On these benches

lay red caps, with which each speaker covered his head before ascending

the tribune. The latter consisted of four buttressed stop-planks,

crossed at their X by a single plank, like a scaffolding.

Behind the president, together with a statue of Liberty, one saw

so-called instruments of ancient justice, instruments whose place had

been supplied by one other, the blood-machine, in the same way as

complicated machinery has been replaced by the hydraulic ram. The Club

des Jacobins _épurés_, or purged Jacobin Club, borrowed some of these

arrangements of the Cordeliers.

*

The orators, who had met for purposes of destruction, were unable to

agree in electing their leaders or in the methods to be employed; they

treated each other as scoundrels, pickpockets, thieves, butchers, to

the cacophony of the hisses and groans of their several groups of

devils. Their metaphors were taken from the stock of murders, borrowed

from the filthiest objects of every kind of sewer and dunghill, or

drawn from the places consecrated to the prostitution of men and

women. Gestures accentuated these figures of speech; everything was

called by its name, with cynical indecency, in an obscene and impious

pageantry of oaths and blasphemies. Destruction and production, death

and generation, one distinguished naught else through the savage

slang which deafened the ears. The speech-makers, with their shrill

or thundering voices, had interrupters other than their opponents:

the little brown owls of the cloisters without monks and the steeple

without bells played in the broken windows, in the hope of booty;

they interrupted the speeches. They were first called to order by the

jingling of the impotent bell; but when they failed to stop their

clamour, shots were fired at them to compel them to silence: they fell,

throbbing, wounded and fatidical, in the midst of the pandemonium.

Broken-down timber-work, rickety pews, ramshackle stalls, fragments

of saints rolled and pushed against the walls, served as benches

for the dirty, grimy, drunken, sweating spectators, in their ragged

_carmagnoles_, with their shouldered pikes or bare crossed arms.

The most deformed of the band obtained the readiest hearing. Mental

and bodily infirmities have played a part in our troubles: wounded

self-love has made great revolutionaries.

*

Following this precedence of hideousness, there appeared in succession,

mingled with the ghosts of the Sixteen, a series of gorgon heads.

The former doctor of the Comte d'Artois' Bodyguards, the Swiss fœtus

Marat[36], his bare feet in wooden clogs or hob-nailed shoes, was the

first to hold forth, by virtue of his incontestable claims. Holding

the office of "jester" at the Court of the people, he exclaimed, with

an insipid expression and the smirk of trite politeness which the old

bringing-up set on every face:

"People, you must cut off two hundred and seventy thousand heads!"

To this Caligula of the public places succeeded the atheistical

shoemaker Chaumette[37]. He was followed by the "Attorney-General

to the Lantern," Camille Desmoulins, a stuttering Cicero, a public

counsellor of murders worn out with debauchery, a frivolous Republican

with his puns and jokes, a maker of graveyard jests, who said that, in

the massacres of September, "all had passed off orderly." He consented

to become a Spartan, provided the making of the black broth was left to

Méot the tavern-keeper[38].

Fouché[39], who had hastened up from Juilly or Nantes, studied disaster

under those doctors: in the circle of wild beasts seated attentively

round the chair he looked like a dressed-up hyena. He smelt the

effluvium of the blood to come; already he inhaled the incense of the

procession of asses and executioners, pending the day on which, driven

from the Club des Jacobins as a thief, an atheist and an assassin, he

should be chosen as a minister.

[Sidenote: Marat.]

When Marat had climbed down from his plank, that popular Triboulet[40]

became the sport of his masters: they filliped him on the nose, trod

on his feet, hustled him with "gee-ups," all of which did not prevent

him from becoming the leader of the multitude, climbing to the clock

of the Hôtel de Ville, sounding the tocsin for a general massacre, and

triumphing in the revolutionary tribunal.

Marat, like Milton's Sin, was violated by death[41]: Chénier wrote his

apotheosis, David[42] painted him in his blood-stained bath; he was

compared to the divine Author of the Gospel. A prayer was dedicated to

him: "Heart of Jesus, Heart of Marat; O Sacred Heart of Jesus, O Sacred

Heart of Marat!" This heart of Marat had for a ciborium a costly pyx

from the Royal Repository. In a grass-grown cenotaph, erected on the

Place du Carrousel, were exhibited the divinity's bust, his bath, lamp,

and inkstand. Then the wind changed: the unclean thing, poured from its

agate urn into a different vase, was emptied into the sewer.

*

The scenes at the Cordeliers, of which I witnessed some three or four,

were dominated and presided over by Danton, a Hun of Gothic stature,

with a flat nose, outspread nostrils, furrowed jaws, and the face of

a gendarme combined with that of a lewd and cruel attorney. In the

shell of his church, as it were the skeleton of the centuries, Danton,

with his three male furies, Camille Desmoulins, Marat, and Fabre

d'Églantine[43], organized the assassinations of September. Billaud de

Varennes[44] proposed to set fire to the prisons and burn all those

inside; another Conventional voted that all the untried prisoners

should be drowned; Marat declared himself in favour of a general

massacre. Danton was besought to show mercy to the prisoners:

"----the prisoners!" he replied.

As author of the circular of the Commune, he invited free men to repeat

in the departments the enormities perpetrated at the Carmelites and the

Abbaye.

Let us consider history: Sixtus V.[45] pronounced the devotion of

Jacques Clément[46] to be equal, for the salvation of mankind, to the

mystery of the Incarnation, even as Marat was compared to the Saviour

of the World; Charles IX.[47] wrote to the governors of provinces to

imitate the St. Bartholomew[48] massacres, even as Danton summoned

the patriots to copy the massacres of September. The Jacobins were

plagiaries; they were still more so when they offered up Louis XVI.

in imitation of Charles I.[49] As these crimes were connected with a

great social movement, some have, very unaptly, imagined that those

crimes produced the greatness of the Revolution, of which they were

but the hideous _pasticcios_: while watching a fine nature suffering,

passionate or systematic minds have admired only its convulsions.

Danton, more candid than the English, said:

"We will not try our King, we will kill him."

He also said:

"Those priests and nobles are not guilty, but they must die, because

they are out of place; they trammel the movement of things and obstruct

the future."

These words, beneath an appearance of horrible depth, possess no extent

of genius, for they presume that innocence is nothing, and that moral

order can be withdrawn from political order without causing the latter

to perish, which is false.

[Sidenote: Danton.]

Danton had not the conviction of the principles he maintained; he had

donned the revolutionary cloak only to make his fortune.

"Come and 'brawl' with us," he advised a young man: "when you have

grown rich, you can do as you please."

He admitted that, if he had not sold himself to the Court, it was

because it would not pay a high enough price for him: an instance

of the effrontery of a mind that knows itself and a corruption that

reveals itself open-mouthed.

Though inferior, even in ugliness, to Marat, whose agent he had been,

Danton was superior to Robespierre, without, like the latter, having

given his name to his crimes. He preserved the religious sense:

"We have not," he said, "destroyed superstition to establish atheism."

His passions might have been good ones, if only because they were

passions. We must allow for character in the actions of men; culprits

with heated imaginations like Danton seem, by reason of the very

exaggeration of their sayings and doings, to be more froward than the

cool-headed culprits, whereas in fact they are less so. This remark

applies also to the people: taken collectively, the people is a poet,

author and ardent actor of the piece which it plays or is made to play.

Its excesses partake not so much of the instinct of a native cruelty

as of the delirium of a crowd intoxicated with sights, especially when

these are tragic: a thing so true that, in popular horrors, there is

always something superfluous added to the picture and the emotion.

Danton was caught in the trap himself had laid. It availed him nothing

to flick pellets of bread at his judges' noses, to reply nobly and

courageously, to cause the tribunal to hesitate, to endanger and

terrify the Convention, to reason logically upon crimes by which the

very power of his enemies had been created, to exclaim, smitten with

barren repentance, "It was I who instituted this infamous tribunal: I

crave pardon for it of God and men!" a phrase which has been pilfered

more than once. It was before being indicted before the tribunal that

he should have declared its infamy.

It only remained to Danton to show himself as pitiless for his own

death as he had been for that of his victims, to hold his head higher

than the hanging knife: and this he did. From the stage of the Terror,

where his feet stuck in the clotted blood of the previous day, after

turning a glance of contempt and domination over the crowd, he said to

the headsman:

"Show my head to the people; it is worth showing."

Danton's head remained in the executioner's hands, while the acephalous

shade went to join the decapitated shades of his victims: a further

instance of equality. Danton's deacon and sub-deacon, Camille

Desmoulins and Fabre d'Églantine, died in the same manner as their

priest.

[Sidenote: Camille Desmoulins.]

At a time when pensions were being paid to the guillotine, when one

wore at the buttonhole of one's carmagnole, by way of a flower, a

little guillotine in gold, or else a small piece of a guillotined

person's heart; at a time when people shouted, "Hell for ever!" when

they celebrated the joyful orgies of blood, steel and fury, when they

toasted annihilation, when they danced the dance of the dead quite

naked, so as not to have the trouble of undressing when about to

join them; at that time one was bound in the end to come to the last

banquet, the last pleasantry of sorrow. Desmoulins was invited to

Fouquier-Tinville's[50] tribunal.

"What is your age?" asked the president.

"The age of the Sans-Culotte Jesus," replied Camille facetiously[51].

An avenging obsession compelled the assassins of Christians unceasingly

to confess the name of Christ.

It would be unfair to forget that Camille Desmoulins dared to defy

Robespierre and to atone for his errors by his courage. He gave the

signal for the reaction against the Terror. A young and charming wife,

full of energy, had, by making him capable of love, made him capable

of virtue and sacrifice. Indignation instilled eloquence into the

tribune's coarse and reckless irony: he attacked in the grand manner

the scaffolds he had helped to erect. Adapting his conduct to his

speech, he refused to consent to his execution; he struggled with the

headsman in the tumbril, and arrived at the edge of the last gulf with

his clothes half tom from his back.

Fabre d'Églantine, author of a play which will live[52], displayed,

quite contrary to Desmoulins, a signal weakness. Jean Roseau, public

executioner of Paris under the League, who was hanged for lending his

offices to the assassins of the Président Brisson[53], could not bring

himself to accept the rope. It seems that one does not learn how to die

by killing others.

The debates at the Cordeliers established for me the fact of a state of

society at the most rapid moment of its transformation. I had seen the

Constituent Assembly commence the murder of the kingship in 1789 and

1790; I found the body, still quite warm, of the old monarchy handed

over in 1792 to the legislative gut-workers: they disembowelled and

dissected it in the cellars of their clubs, as the halberdiers cut up

and burnt the body of the Balafré[54] in the garret of Blois Castle.

Of all the men whom I recall, Danton, Marat. Camille Desmoulins, Fabre

d'Églantine, Robespierre, not one is alive. I met them for a moment on

my passage between a nascent society in America and an expiring society

in Europe; between the forests of the New World and the solitudes of

exile: before I had reckoned a few months on foreign soil, those lovers

of death had already spent themselves in her arms. At the distance

at which I now find myself from their appearance, it seems to me as

though, after descending into the infernal regions of my youth, I

retain a confused recollection of the shades which I vaguely saw wander

by the bank of Cocytus: they complete the varied dreams of my life, and

come to be inscribed on my tablets of beyond the tomb.

*

It was a great pleasure to meet M. de Malesherbes again and speak to

him of my old projects. I stated my plans for a second journey, which

was to last nine years; all I had to do first was to take another

little journey to Germany: I was to run to the Army of the Princes, and

come back at a run to kill the Revolution; all this would be finished

in two or three months, when I should hoist my sail and return to the

New World, having got rid of a revolution and enriched myself by a

marriage.

And yet my zeal exceeded my faith; I felt that the emigration was a

stupidity and a madness:

"I was shaven on all hands," says Montaigne. "To the Ghibelin I was a

Guelf, to Guelf a Ghibelin[55]."

My distaste for absolute monarchy left me with no illusions concerning

the step I was taking. I cherished scruples, and, although resolved

to sacrifice myself to honour, I desired to have M. de Malesherbes'

opinion on the emigration. I found him much incensed: the crimes

continued under his eyes had caused the friend of Rousseau to lose his

political toleration; between the cause of the victims and that of the

butchers he did not hesitate. He believed that anything was better than

the existing state of things; he thought that, in my particular case, a

man wearing the sword was bound to join the brothers of a King who was

oppressed and delivered to his enemies. He approved of my returning to

America, and urged my brother to go with me.

I raised the ordinary objections based upon the assistance of

foreigners, the interests of the country, and so on. He replied

and, passing from general arguments to details, quoted some awkward

examples. He put before me the case of the Guelphs and Ghibhelinnes,

relying on the troops of the Emperor and the Pope; in England, the

barons rising against John Lackland. Finally, in our times, he quoted

the case of the Republic of the United States imploring the assistance

of France.

"In the same way," continued M. de Malesherbes, "the men most devoted

to liberty and philosophy, the Republicans and Protestants, have never

considered themselves to blame when they have borrowed a force which

could ensure the victory of their opinion. Would the New World be free

today without our gold, our ships, and our soldiers? I, Malesherbes,

who am speaking to you, did not I, in 1776, receive Franklin, who

came to renew the relations entered into by Silas Deane[56], and yet

was Franklin a traitor? Was American liberty any the less honourable

for being assisted by La Fayette and won by French grenadiers? Every

government which, instead of securing the fundamental laws of society,

itself transgresses the laws of equity, the rules of justice, ceases to

exist, and restores man to the state of nature. It is then lawful to

defend one's self as best one may, to resort to the means that appear

most calculated to overthrow tyranny and to restore the rights of one

and all."

[Sidenote: Talks with Malesherbes.]

The principles of natural right as set forth by the greatest

publicists, developed by such a man as M. de Malesherbes, and supported

by numerous historical examples, struck me without convincing me;

I yielded in reality only to the impulse of my age, to the point

of honour. I will add some more recent examples to those of M. de

Malesherbes: during the Spanish War of 1823, the French Republican

Party went to serve under the banner of the Cortès, and did not scruple

to bear arms against its own country; in 1830 and 1831, the Poles and

the constitutional Italians invoked the assistance of France, and the

Portuguese of the "Charter" invaded their country with the aid of

foreign money and foreign soldiers. We have two standards of weight

and measurement: we approve in the case of one idea, one system, one

interest, one man of that which we condemn in the case of another idea,

another system, another interest, another man.

These conversations between myself and the illustrious defender of the

King took place at my sister-in-law's; she had just given birth to a

second son, to whom M. de Malesherbes stood god-father and gave his

name, Christian. I was present at the baptism of this child, which

was to see its father and mother only at an age at which life leaves

no memory and appears at a distance like an ill-remembered dream. The

preparations for my departure lagged. They had thought that they were

making me contract a rich marriage: it appeared that my wife's fortune

was invested in Church securities; the nation undertook to pay them

after its own fashion. Not only that, but Madame de Chateaubriand had,

with the consent of her trustees, lent the scrip of a large portion of

these securities to her sister, the Comtesse du Plessix-Parscau, who

had emigrated. Money was still wanting, therefore; it became necessary

to borrow.

A notary procured ten thousand francs for us: I was taking them home to

the Cul-de-sac Férou, in _assignats_, when, in the Rue de Richelieu, I

met one of my old messmates in the Navarre Regiment, the Comte Achard.

He was a great gambler; he proposed that we should go to the rooms of

M----, where we could talk; the devil urged me: I went upstairs, I

played, I lost all, except fifteen hundred francs, with which, full of

remorse and humiliation, I climbed into the first coach that passed.

I had never played before: play produced in me a sort of painful

intoxication; if the passion had attacked me, it would have turned

my brain. With half-disordered wits, I stepped out of the coach at

Saint-Sulpice, and left my pocket-book behind, containing the remnant

of my treasure. I ran home and said that I had left the ten thousand

francs in a hackney-coach.

I went out again, turned down the Rue Dauphine, crossed the Pont-Neuf,

feeling half inclined to throw myself into the water; I went to the

Place du Palais-Royal, where I had taken the ill-omened vehicle. I

questioned the Savoyards who watered the screws, and described my

conveyance; they told me a number at random. The police commissary of

the district informed me that that number belonged to a job-master

living at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Denis. I went to the

man's house; I remained all night in the stable, waiting for the

hackney-coaches to return: a large number arrived in succession which

were not mine; at last, at two o'clock in the morning, I saw my chariot

drive in. I had hardly time to recognise my two white steeds, when the

poor beasts, utterly worn out, dropped down upon the straw, stiff,

their stomachs distended, their legs stretched out, as though dead.

The coachman remembered driving me. After me, he had taken up a

citizen, whom he had set down at the Jacobins; after the citizen, a

lady, whom he had taken to the Rue de Cléry, number 13; after that

lady, a gentleman, whom he had put down at the Recollects in the Rue

Saint-Martin. I promised the driver a gratuity, and, the moment

daylight had come, set out on the discovery of my fifteen hundred

francs, as I had gone in search of the North-West Passage. It seemed

clear to me that the citizen of the Jacobins had confiscated them by

right of his sovereignty. The young person of the Rue de Cléry averred

that she had seen nothing in the coach. I reached the third station

without any hope; the coachman gave a tolerably good description of the

gentleman he had driven. The porter exclaimed:

"It's the Père So-and-so!"

He led me through the passages and the deserted apartments to a

Recollect who had remained behind alone to make an inventory of the

furniture of his convent. Seated on a heap of rubbish, in a dusty

frock-coat, the monk listened to my story:

"Are you," he asked, "the Chevalier de Chateaubriand?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Here is your pocket-book," said he. "I would have brought it when I

had finished: I found your address inside."

[Sidenote: An honest monk.]

It was this hunted and plundered monk, engaged in conscientiously

counting up the relics of his cloister for his proscribes, who restored

to me the fifteen hundred francs with which I was about to make my

way to exile. Failing this small sum, I should not have emigrated:

what should I have become? My whole life would have changed. I will be

hanged if I would to-day move a step to recover a million.

This happened on the 16th of June 1792. Obeying the promptings of

my instinct, I had returned from America to offer my sword to Louis

XVI., not to associate myself with party intrigues. The disbanding of

the King's new guard, of which Murat[57] was a member; the successive

ministries of Roland[58], Dumouriez, Duport du Tertre[59]; the little

conspiracies of the Court and the great popular risings filled me

only with weariness and contempt. I heard much talk of Madame Roland,

whom I never saw: her Memoirs show that she possessed an extraordinary

strength of mind. She was said to be very agreeable: it remains to be

known whether she was sufficiently so to make at all tolerable the

cynicism of her unnatural virtues. Certainly the woman who, at the

foot of the guillotine, asked for pen and ink to describe the last

moments of her journey, to write down the discoveries she had made in

the course of her progress from the Conciergerie to the Place de la

Révolution, that woman displayed an absorption in futurity, a contempt

for life, of which there are few examples. Madame Roland possessed

character rather than genius: the first can give the second, the second

cannot give the first.

On the 19th of June, I went to the Vale of Montmorency to visit the

Hermitage of J. J. Rousseau: not that I delighted in the memories of

Madame d'Épinay[60] and of that depraved and artificial society; but

I wished to take leave of the solitude of a man whose morals were

antipathetic to mine, although he himself was endowed with a talent

whose accents stirred my youth. On the next day, the 20th of June, I

was still at the Hermitage, and there met two men walking, like myself,

in that deserted spot during the fatal day of the monarchy, indifferent

as they were or might be, thought I, to the affairs of this world:

one was M. Maret[61], of the Empire, the other M. Barère[62], of the

Republic. The amiable Barère had come, far from the uproar, in his

sentimental, philosophical way, to whisper soft revolutionary nothings

to the shade of Julie. The troubadour of the guillotine, on whose

report the Convention decreed that the Terror was the order of the

day, escaped the same Terror by hiding in the head-basket; from the

bottom of the bloody trough, beneath the scaffold, he was heard only to

croak the word, "Death!" Barère belonged to the species of tigers which

Oppian represents as born of the wind's light breath: _velocis Zephyri

proles._

Ginguené, Chamfort, my old friends among the men of letters, were

delighted with the 20th of June. La Harpe, continuing his lectures at

the Lycée, shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Fools! To all the representations of the people you answered,

'Bayonets! Bayonets!' Well, you have them now, your bayonets!"

Although my travels in America had made a less insignificant personage

of me, I was unable to rise to so great a height of principle and

eloquence. Fontanes was in danger through his former connection

with the Société Monarchique. My brother was a member of a club of

_enragés._ The Prussians were marching by virtue of a convention

between the Cabinets of Vienna and Berlin; a rather fierce engagement

had already taken place between the French and Austrians near Mons. It

was more than time for me to take a decision.

[Sidenote: My brother and I emigrate.]

My brother and I procured false passports for Lille: we were two

wine-merchants and national guards of Paris, wearing the uniform

and proposing to tender for the army supplies. My brother's valet,

Louis Poullain, known as Saint-Louis, travelled under his own name;

he came from Lamballe, in Lower Brittany, but was going to see his

family in Flanders. The day of our emigration was settled for the

15th of July, the day after the second Federation. We spent the 14th

in the Tivoli garden, with the Rosanbo family, my sisters and my

wife. Tivoli belonged to M. Boutin[63], whose daughter had married

M. de Malesherbes[64]. Towards the end of the day we saw a good many

federates wandering about after disbanding; on their hats was written

in chalk, "Pétion or death!" Tivoli, the starting-point of my exile,

was to become a centre of amusements and fêtes. Our relations took

leave of us without sadness; they were persuaded that we were going on

a pleasure-trip. My recovered fifteen hundred francs seemed a treasure

sufficient to bring me back in triumph to Paris.

On the 10th of July, at six o'clock in the morning, we climbed into the

diligence: we had booked our seats in the front part, by the guard;

the valet, whom we were supposed not to know, stuffed himself into the

inside with the other passengers. Saint-Louis walked in his sleep; in

Paris he used to go looking for his master at night, with his eyes

open, but quite asleep. He used to undress my brother and put him to

bed, sleeping all the time, answering, "I know, I know," to all that

was said to him during his attacks, and waking only when cold water was

thrown in his face: he was a man of about forty, nearly six feet high,

and as ugly as he was tall. This poor fellow, who was very respectful

by nature, had never served any master except my brother; he was quite

confused when he had to sit down to table with us at supper. The

passengers, great patriots all, talking of hanging the aristocrats from

the lanterns, increased his dismay. The thought that, at the end of all

this, he would be obliged to pass through the Austrian Army, in order

to fight in the Army of the Princes, completely turned his brain. He

drank heavily and climbed into the diligence again; we went back to the

coupé.

In the middle of the night we heard the passengers shouting, with their

heads out of the windows:

"Stop, postilion, stop!"

They stopped, the door of the diligence was opened, and immediately

male and female voices exclaimed:

"Get down, citizen, get down! We can't stand this! Get down, you beast!

He's a brigand! Get down, get down!"

We got down too, and saw Saint-Louis hustled, flung out of the coach,

stand up, turn his wide-open but sleeping eyes around him, and take

to flight in the direction of Paris, without his hat, and as fast as

his legs would carry him. We were unable to acknowledge him, or we

should have betrayed ourselves; we had to leave him to his fate. He was

caught and taken up at the first village, and stated that he was the

servant of M. le Comte de Chateaubriand, and that he lived in the Rue

de Bondy, Paris. The rural police passed him on from brigade to brigade

to the Président de Rosanbo's; the unhappy man's depositions served to

prove our emigration, and to send my brother and sister-in-law to the

scaffold.

The next day, when the diligence stopped for breakfast, we had to

listen to the whole story a score of times:

"That man had a perturbed imagination; he was dreaming out loud; he

said strange things; he was no doubt a conspirator, an assassin fleeing

from justice."

The well-bred citizenesses blushed and waved large green-paper

"Constitutional" fans. We easily recognised through these stories the

effects of somnambulism, fear and wine.

[Sidenote: We cross the frontier.]

On reaching Lille, we went in search of the person who was to take

us across the frontier. The Emigration had its agents of safety who

eventually became agents of perdition. The monarchical party was still

powerful, the question undecided: the weak and cowardly served, while

awaiting the turn of events. We left Lille before the gates were

closed: we stopped at a remote house, and did not start until ten

o'clock at night, when it was quite dark; we carried nothing with us;

we had a little cane in our hands; it was no more than a year since I,

in the same way, followed my Dutchman in the American forests.

We crossed cornfields through which wound hardly traceable footpaths.

The French and Austrian patrols were beating the country-side: we

were liable to fall in with either, or to find ourselves in front of

the pistols of a vedette. We saw single horsemen in the distance,

motionless, weapon in hand; we heard the hoofs of horses in the hollow

roads; laying our ears against the ground, we heard the regular tramp

of infantry marching. After three hours spent alternately in running

and in creeping along on tiptoe, we reached a cross-road in a wood

where some belated nightingales were singing. A troop of uhlans, posted

behind a hedge, fell upon us with raised sabres. We shouted:

"Officers going to join the Princes!"

We asked to be taken to Tournay, saying we were in a position to make

ourselves known. The officer in command placed us between his troopers

and carried us off. When day broke, the uhlans perceived our national

guards' uniforms under our surtouts, and insulted the colours in which

France was soon to dress her vassal, Europe.

In Tournaisis, the primitive kingdom of the Franks, Clovis resided

during the early years of his reign; he set out from Tournay with his

companions, summoned as he was to the conquest of the Gauls: "Arms

always have right on their side," says Tacitus. Through this town, from

which, in 486, the first King of the First Race[65] rode to found his

long and mighty monarchy, I passed in 1792 to go and join the Princes

of the Third Race on foreign soil, and I passed through it again in

1815, when the last King of the French abandoned the kingdom of the

first King of the Franks: _omnia migrant._

When we reached Tournay, I left my brother to grapple with the

authorities, and in the custody of a soldier visited the cathedral. In

days of old, Odo of Orleans, the scholasticus of the cathedral, seated

at night before the church porch, taught his disciples the course of

the planets, and pointed out to them the Milky Way and the stars.

I would rather have found this artless eleventh-century astronomer

at Tournay than the Pandours. I delight in those days in which the

chronicles tell me, under the year 1049, that, in Normandy, a man had

been transformed into a donkey: that was like to have happened to me,

as the reader knows, at the house of the Demoiselles Couppart, who

taught me to read. Hildebert[66], in 1114, saw a girl from whose ears

grew spikes of corn: perhaps it was Ceres. The Meuse, which I was

soon to cross, was suspended in mid-air in the year 1118, as witness

Guillaume de Nangis[67] and Albéric[68]. Rigord[69] assures us that,

in 1194, between Compiègne and Clermont in Beauvoisis, there fell a

storm of hail, mixed with ravens which carried charcoal and caused a

fire. If the tempest, as Gervase of Tilbury[70] tells us, was unable to

extinguish a candle on the window-sill of the priory of Saint-Michel

"de Camissa," we also know through him that, in the Diocese of Uzès,

there was a fair and clear spring which changed its place when anything

unclean was thrown into it: our latter-day consciences do not put

themselves out for so little.

Reader, I am not wasting time; I am chatting with you to keep you in

patience while waiting for my brother, who is arranging things: here

he comes, after explaining himself to the satisfaction of the Austrian

commander. We have leave to go on to Brussels, an exile purchased with

too much care and trouble.

*

[Sidenote: Brussels.]

Brussels was the head-quarters of the upper Emigration: the most

elegant women of Paris and the most fashionable men, those who were

able to march only as aides-de-camp, were awaiting amid pleasures the

moment of victory. They had fine brand-new uniforms; they paraded

the very pedantry of frivolity. Considerable sums, enough to keep

them for a few years, were squandered in a few days: it was not worth

while economizing, since we should be in Paris directly. Those gallant

knights, reversing the practice of the olden chivalry, were preparing

for glory with successes in love. They scornfully watched us trudging

on foot, knapsack on back, small provincial gentlemen that we were, or

poor officers turned into private soldiers. Those Hercules sat at the

feet of their Omphales spinning the distaffs which they had sent us and

which we handed back to them as we passed, contenting ourselves with

our swords.

In Brussels I found my scanty luggage, which had fraudulently passed

the customs ahead of me: it consisted of my Navarre uniform, a little

linen, and my precious papers, with which I could not part. I was

invited with my brother to dine at the Baron de Breteuil's; I there met

the Baronne de Montmorency, then young and beautiful, at this moment

dying; martyr bishops in watered-silk cassocks and gold crosses; young

magistrates transformed into Hungarian colonels; and Rivarol, whom I

saw only once in my life. His name had not been mentioned; I was struck

by the conversation of a man who held forth all alone and was listened

to, with some right, as an oracle. Rivarol's wit was prejudicial to his

talent, as his tongue was to his pen. Talking of revolutions, he said:

"The first blow aims at God, the second strikes only a senseless slab

of marble."

I had resumed my uniform of a petty infantry subaltern; I was to start

on rising from dinner, and my knapsack was behind the door. I was still

bronzed by the American sun and the sea air; I wore my hair uncurled

and unpowdered. My face and my silence troubled Rivarol; the Baron de

Breteuil, perceiving his restless curiosity, satisfied it:

"Where does your brother the chevalier come from?" he asked my brother.

I answered:

"From Niagara."

Rivarol cried:

"From the cataract!"

I was silent. He hazarded an uncompleted question:

"Monsieur is going----?"

"Where they are fighting," I broke in.

We rose from table.

This fatuous Emigrant society was hateful to me; I was eager to see my

peers, Emigrants like myself with six hundred francs a year. We were

very stupid, no doubt, but at least we aired our sword-blades, and, if

we had obtained any successes, we should have been the last to profit

by victory.

My brother remained at Brussels with the Baron de Montboissier[71], who

appointed him his aide-de-camp; I set out alone for Coblentz.

There is no more historic road than that which I followed; it recalled

in every part some memory or greatness of France. I passed through

Liège, one of those municipal republics which so often rose against

their bishops or against the Counts of Flanders. Louis XI.[72], the

ally of the Liégeois, was obliged to assist at the sack of their town

in order to escape from his ridiculous prison of Péronne. I was about

to join and to become one of the soldiers who glory in such things. In

1792, the relations between Liège and France were more peaceful: the

Abbot of Saint-Hubert was obliged every year to send two hounds to King

Dagobert's successors.

At Aix-la-Chapelle there was another offering, but on the part of

France: the pall that had served at the funeral of a Most Christian

King was sent to the tomb of Charlemagne as a vassal banner to the

lord's fief. Our kings thus did fealty and homage on taking possession

of the inheritance of Eternity: laying their hands between the knees

of their liege-lady, Death, they swore to be faithful to her, after

pressing the feudal kiss on her mouth. This, however, was the only

suzerain of whom France acknowledged herself the vassal.

[Illustration: Le Comte de Rivarol.]

The Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle was built by Karl the Great and

consecrated by Leo III[73]. Two prelates failing to attend the

ceremony, their places were filled by two Bishops of Maastricht, long

deceased, and resuscitated for the purpose. Charlemagne, having lost

a beautiful mistress, pressed her body in his arms and refused to be

separated from it. His passion was attributed to a charm: the young

corpse was examined, and a tiny pearl found beneath the tongue. The

pearl was flung into a marsh; Charlemagne became madly enamoured of

the marsh, and ordered it to be filled up: there he built a palace and

a church, to spend his life in one and his death in the other. The

authorities here are Archbishop Turpin[74] and Petrarch[75].

At Cologne I admired the cathedral: if it were finished, it would be

the finest Gothic monument in Europe. The monks were the painters,

the sculptors, the architects, and the masons of their basilicas;

they gloried in the title of master-mason, _cœmentarius._ It is

curious to hear ignorant philosophers and chattering democrats cry out

to-day against the monks, as though those frocked proletarians, those

mendicant orders to whom we owe almost everything, had been gentlemen!

Cologne reminded me of Caligula[76] and St. Bruno[77]; I have seen the

remains of the dykes built by the former at Baiæ, and the deserted

cell of the latter at the Grande Chartreuse.

I went up the Rhine as far as Coblentz: _Confluentia._ The Army of the

Princes was no longer there. I crossed those empty kingdoms: _inania

regna_; I saw the beautiful valley of the Rhine, the Tempe of the

barbarian muses, where the knights appeared around the ruins of their

castles, where one hears the clash of arms at night, when war is at

hand.

[Sidenote: Frederic William II.]

Between Coblentz and Trèves, I fell in with the Prussian Army: I was

passing along the column when, coming up with the guards, I noticed

that they were marching in battle order, with cannon in line; the

King[78] and the Duke of Brunswick[79] were in the centre of the

square, composed of Frederic's old grenadiers. My white uniform caught

the King's eye: he sent for me; the Duke of Brunswick and he took off

their hats and saluted the old French Army in my person. They asked me

my name, my regiment, the place where I was going to join the Princes.

This military welcome touched me: I replied with emotion that, on

learning in America of my King's misfortunes, I had returned to shed my

blood in his service. The generals and officers surrounding Frederic

William made a movement of approbation, and the Prussian sovereign said:

"Sir, one always recognises the sentiments of the French nobility."

He took off his hat again and stood uncovered and motionless, until I

had disappeared behind the mass of the grenadiers. Nowadays people cry

out against the Emigrants: they are "tigers who rent their mother's

bosom;" at the time of which I speak, men loved the examples of old,

and honour ranked as high as country. In 1792, fidelity to one's oath

was still accounted a duty; to-day, it has become so rare that it is

regarded as a virtue.

A strange scene, already rehearsed with others than myself, almost made

me retrace my steps. They refused to admit me at Trèves, where the Army

of the Princes was:

"I was one of those men who await the course of events before making

up their minds; I ought to have joined the cantonment three years ago;

I came when victory was assured. They had no use for me; they had only

too many of those heroes after the battle. Every day, squadrons of

cavalry were deserting; even the artillery was melting away in a body;

and, if that went on, they would not know what to do with those people!"

O prodigious illusionment of parties!

I met my cousin Armand de Chateaubriand: he took me under his

protection, assembled the Bretons and pleaded my cause. They sent for

me; I made my explanation: I told them that I had come from America

to have the honour of serving beside my comrades; that the campaign

was opened, not commenced, so that I was still in time for the first

fire; that, however, I would go back if they insisted, but not before

I had obtained satisfaction for an undeserved insult. The matter was

arranged: as I was a good fellow, the ranks were opened to receive

me, and my only difficulty was to make my selection.

[Illustration: Frederic William II.]

*

[Sidenote: The Emigrant army.]

The Army of the Princes was composed of gentlemen, classed by provinces

and serving as private soldiers: the nobility was harking back to its

origin and to the origin of the monarchy, at the very moment when

both the nobility and monarchy were coming to an end, even as an old

man returns to childhood. There were, moreover, brigades of Emigrant

officers of different regiments, who had also become soldiers: among

these were my messmates of Navarre, with their colonel, the Marquis

de Mortemart, at their head. I was strongly tempted to enlist with

La Martinière, even though he should still be in love; but Armorican

patriotism won the day. I enrolled myself in the seventh Breton

Company, commanded by M. de Goyon-Miniac[80]. The nobles of my province

had furnished seven companies; to these was added an eighth consisting

of young men of the Third Estate: the steel-grey uniform of this

last company differed from that of the others, which was royal blue

with ermine facings. Men attached to the same cause and exposed to

the same dangers perpetuated their political inequalities by odious

distinctions: the true heroes were the plebeian soldiers, since no

consideration of personal interest entered into the sacrifice they made.

Enumeration of our little army:

Infantry of gentlemen-soldiers and officers; four companies of

deserters, dressed in the different uniforms of the regiments

from which they came; one company of artillery; a few officers of

engineers, with some guns, howitzers, and mortars of various calibres

(the artillery and engineers, almost all of whom embraced the cause

of the Revolution, achieved its success across the borders). A very

fine cavalry, consisting of German carabineers, musketeers under

the command of the old Comte de Montmorin and naval officers from

Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, supported our infantry. The wholesale

emigration of these last-named officers plunged naval France back into

the condition of weakness from which Louis XVI. had extricated it.

Never since the days of Duquesne and Tourville[81] had our squadrons

covered themselves with more glory. My comrades were delighted: I had

tears in my eyes when I saw pass before them those ocean dragons, who

no longer commanded the ships with which they had humbled the English

and delivered America. Instead of going in search of new continents to

bequeath to France, these companions of La Pérouse sank into the mud of

Germany. They rode the horse dedicated to Neptune; but they had changed

their element, and the land was not for them. In vain their commander

carried at their head the tattered ensign of the _Belle-Poule_, the

sacred relic of the White Flag, from whose shreds honour still hung,

but victory had fallen.

We had tents; we lacked all beside. Our muskets, of German make,

trumpery weapons and frightfully heavy, broke our shoulders, and were

often not in a condition to be fired. I went through the whole campaign

with one of these firelocks, the hammer of which refused to fall.

We remained two days at Trèves. It was a great pleasure to me to see

Roman ruins after having seen the nameless ruins of Ohio, to visit that

town so often sacked, of which Salvianus[82] said:

"O fugitives from Trèves, you ask again for theatres, you demand a

circus of the princes: for what State, I pray you; for what people, for

what city? _Theatra igitur quæritis, circum a principibus postulatis?

Cui, quæso, statut, cui populo, cui civitati?_"

Fugitives from France, where was the people for which we wished to

restore the monuments of St. Louis?

I sat down, with my musket, among the ruins; I took from my knapsack

the manuscript of my travels in America; I arranged the separate sheets

on the grass around me; I read over and corrected a description of a

forest, a passage of _Atala_, in the fragments of a Roman amphitheatre,

preparing in this way to make the conquest of France. Then I put away

my treasure, the weight of which, combined with that of my shirts, my

cloak, my tin can, my wicker bottle, and my little Homer, made me throw

up blood.

I tried to stuff _Atala_ into my cartridge-box with my useless

ammunition; my comrades made fun of me, and pulled at the sheets which

stuck out on either side of the leather cover. Providence came to my

rescue: one night, after sleeping in a hay-loft, I found, when I woke,

that my shirts were no longer in my sack; the thieves had left the

papers. I praised God: that accident assured my "fame" and saved my

life, for the sixty pounds that pressed upon my shoulders would have

driven me into a consumption.

"How many shirts have I?" asked Henry IV. of his body-servant.

"One dozen, Sire, and some of them are torn."

"And of handkerchiefs, is it not eight that I have?"

"There are only five left now."

The Bearnese won the Battle of Ivry[83] without shirts; the loss of

mine did not enable me to restore his kingdom to his descendants.

*

We received orders to march on Thionville. We did five to six leagues

a day. The weather was terrible; we tramped through the rain and

slush singing, _Ô Richard! ô mon roi!_ and _Pauvre Jacques!_[84] On

arriving at the encamping-place, having neither wagons nor provisions,

we went with donkeys, which followed the column like an Arab caravan,

to hunt for food in the farms and villages. We paid for everything

scrupulously; nevertheless I had to do fatigue duty for taking two

pears from the garden of a country-house without thinking. A great

steeple, a great river and a great lord are bad neighbours, says the

proverb.

We pitched our tents at random, and were constantly obliged to beat the

canvas in order to flatten out the threads and prevent the water from

coming through. We were ten soldiers to every tent; each in turn took

charge of the cooking: one went for meat, another for bread, another

for wood, another for straw. I made wonderful soup; I received great

compliments on it, especially when I mixed milk and cabbage with the

stew, in the Breton way. I had learnt among the Iroquois not to mind

smoke, so that I bore myself bravely before my fire of green and damp

boughs. This soldier's life is very amusing; I imagined myself still

among the Indians. As we sat at mess in our tent my comrades asked me

for tales of my travels; they told me some fine stories in return;

we all lied like a corporal in a tavern, with a conscript paying the

reckoning.

One thing tired me: washing my linen; it had to be done, and often,

for the obliging robber had left me only one shirt, borrowed from

my cousin Armand, besides the one on my back. When I lay soaping my

stockings, my pocket-handkerchiefs and my shirt by the edge of a

stream, with my head down and my loins up, I was seized with fits of

giddiness; the motion of the arms gave me an unbearable pain in the

chest. I was obliged to sit down among the horsetails and watercress;

and, in the midst of the stir of war, I amused myself by watching the

water flow peacefully past. Lope de Vega[85] makes a shepherdess wash

the bandage of Love; that shepherdess would have been very useful to me

for a little birch-cloth turban which my Floridans had given me.

An army is generally composed of soldiers of nearly the same age, the

same height, the same strength. Very different was ours, a jumbled

gathering of grown men, old men, children fresh from the dovecot,

jabbering Norman, Breton, Picard, Auvergnat, Gascon, Provençal,

Languedocian. A father served with his sons, a father-in-law with his

son-in-law, an uncle with his nephews, a brother with a brother, a

cousin with a cousin. This _arrière ban_, ridiculous as it appeared,

had something honourable and touching about it, because it was animated

with sincere convictions; it presented the spectacle of the old

monarchy and afforded a last glimpse of a dying world. I have seen old

noblemen, with stern looks, grey hair, torn coats, knapsack on back,

musket slung over the shoulder, drag themselves along with a stick and

supported by the arm by one of their sons; I have seen M. de Boishue,

the father of my schoolfellow killed at the States of Rennes in my

sight, march solitary and sad, with his bare feet in the mud, carrying

his shoes at the point of his bayonet for fear of wearing them out;

I have seen young wounded men lie under a tree, while a chaplain, in

surtout and stole, knelt by their side, sending them to St. Louis,

whose heirs they had striven to defend. The whole of this needy band,

which received not a sou from the Princes, made war at its own expense,

while the decrees finished despoiling it and threw our wives and

mothers into prison.

The old men of former times were less unhappy and less lonely than

those of to-day: if, in lingering upon earth, they had lost their

friends, there was but little changed around them besides; they

were strangers to youth, but not to society. Nowadays, a lagger in

this world has witnessed the death not only of men, but of ideas:

principles, manners, tastes, pleasures, pains, opinions, none of these

resemble what he used to know. He belongs to a race different from that

among which he ends his days.

[Sidenote: Old France.]

And yet, O nineteenth-century France, learn to prize that old France

which was as good as you. You will grow old in your turn and you will

be accused, as we were accused, of clinging to obsolete ideas. The

men whom you have vanquished are your fathers; do not deny them, you

are sprung from their blood. Had they not been generously faithful

to the ancient traditions, you would not have drawn from that native

fidelity the energy which has been the cause of your glory in the new

traditions: between the old France and the new, all that has happened

is a transformation of virtue.

*

Near our poor and obscure camp was another which was brilliant and

rich. At the staff, one saw nothing but wagons full of eatables, met

with none save cooks, valets, aides-de-camp. Nothing could have better

reproduced the Court and the provinces, the monarchy expiring at

Versailles and the monarchy dying on Du Guesclin's heaths. We had grown

to hate the aides-de-camp; whenever there was an engagement outside

Thionville, we shouted, "Forward, the aides-de-camp!" just as the

patriots used to shout, "Forward, the officers!"

I felt a chill at my heart when, arriving one dark day in sight of

some woods that lined the horizon, we were told that those woods were

in France. To cross the frontier of my country in arms had an effect

upon me which I am unable to convey. I had, as it were, a sort of

revelation of the future, inasmuch as I shared none of my comrades'

illusions, either with regard to the cause they were supporting or the

thoughts of triumph with which they deluded themselves: I was there

like Falkland[86] in the army of Charles I. There was not a Knight of

the Mancha, sick, lame, wearing a night-cap under his three-cornered

beaver, but was most firmly convinced of his ability, unaided, to

put fifty young and vigorous patriots to flight. This honourable and

agreeable pride, at another time the source of prodigies, had not

attacked me: I did not feel so sure of the strength of my invincible

arm.

We reached Thionville unconquered on the 1st of September; for we had

met nobody on the road. The cavalry encamped to the right, the infantry

to the left of the high-road running from the town towards Germany.

The fortress was not visible from the camping-ground, but, six hundred

paces ahead, one came to the ridge of a hill whence the eye swept the

Valley of the Moselle. The mounted men of the navy joined the right of

our infantry to the Austrian corps of the Prince of Waldeck[87], while

the left of the infantry was covered by 1800 horse of the Maison-Rouge

and Royal German Regiments. We entrenched our front with a fosse,

along which the arms were stalked in line. The eight Breton companies

occupied two intersecting streets of the camp, and below us was dressed

the company of the Navarre officers, my former messmates.

When these field-works, which took three days, were completed, Monsieur

and the Comte d'Artois arrived; they reconnoitred the place, which

was called upon in vain to surrender, although Wimpfen[88] seemed

willing to do so. Like the Grand Condé[89], we had not won the Battle

of Rocroi, and so we were not able to capture Thionville; but we were

not beaten under its walls, like Feuquières[90]. We took up a position

on the high-road, at the end of a village which formed a suburb of the

town, outside the horn-work which defended the bridge over the Moselle.

The troops fired at each other from the houses; our post remained in

possession of those which it had taken. I was not present at this first

action. Armand, my cousin, was there and behaved well. While they were

fighting in the village, my company was requisitioned to establish a

battery on the skirt of a wood which capped the summit of a hill. Along

the slope of this hill, vineyards ran down to the plain joining the

outer fortifications of Thionville.

[Sidenote: The siege of Thionville.]

The engineer directing us made us throw up a gazoned cavalier for

our guns; we drew a parallel open trench to place us below the

cannon-balls. These earthworks took long in making, for we were all,

young officers and old alike, unaccustomed to wield the mattock and

spade. We had no wheelbarrows and carried the earth in our coats, which

we used as sacks. Fire was opened on us from a lunette; it was the

more irksome to us in that we were unable to reply: eight-pounders and

a Cohorn howitzer, which was outranged, formed all our artillery. The

first shell we fired fell outside the glacis and aroused the jeers of

the garrison. A few days later, we were joined by some Austrian guns

and gunners. One hundred infantry men and a picket of the naval cavalry

were relieved at this battery every twenty-four hours. The besieged

prepared to attack it; we could distinguish a movement on the rampart

through the telescope. When night fell, we saw a column issue through

a postern and reach the lunette under shelter of the covert way. My

company was ordered up as a reinforcement.

At daybreak, five or six hundred patriots began operations in the

village, on the high-road above the town; then, turning to the left,

they came through the vineyards to take our battery in flank. The

sailors charged bravely, but were overthrown and unmasked us. We were

too badly armed to return the fire; we pushed forward with fixed

bayonets. The attacking party retreated, I know not why; had they held

their ground, they would have wiped us out.

We had several wounded and a few dead, among others the Chevalier de La

Baronnais[91], captain of one of the Breton companies. I brought him

ill-luck: the bullet which took his life ricochetted against the barrel

of my musket and struck him with such force as to pierce both his

temples; his brains were scattered over my face. Noble and unnecessary

victim of a lost cause! When the Maréchal d'Aubeterre[92] held the

States of Brittany, he went to M. de La Baronnais, the father, a

poor nobleman, living at Dinard, near Saint-Malo. The Marshal, who

had begged him to invite nobody, saw, on entering, a table laid for

twenty-five, and scolded his host in friendly fashion.

"Monseigneur," said M. de La Baronnais, "I have only my children to

dinner."

M. de La Baronnais had twenty-two boys and a girl, all by the same

mother. The Revolution reaped this rich family harvest before it was

ripe.

*

Waldeck's Austrian corps began operations. The attack became livelier

on our side. It was a fine spectacle at night: fire-pots lit up the

works of the place covered with soldiers; sudden gleams struck the

clouds or the blue firmament when the guns were fired, and the bombs,

crossing each other in the air, described a parabola of light. In

the intervals between the reports, one heard drums rolling, gusts of

military music, and the voices of the sentries on the ramparts of

Thionville and at our own posts; unfortunately, they called out in

French in both camps:

"_Sentinelles, prenez garde à vous!_ All's well!"

When the fighting took place, at dawn, it would happen that the lark's

morning hymn followed upon the sound of musketry, while the guns,

which had ceased firing, silently stared at us, with gaping mouths,

through the embrasures. The song of the bird, recalling the memories of

pastoral life, seemed to utter a reproach to mankind. It was the same

when I came across some dead bodies in the middle of fields of lucerne

in flower, or by the edge of a stream of water which bathed the hair of

the slain. In the woods, at a few steps from the stress of war, I found

little statues of the Saints and the Virgin. A goat-herd, a neat-herd,

a beggar carrying his wallet knelt beside these peace-makers, telling

their beads to the distant sound of cannon. A whole township once came

with its minister to present flowers to the patron of a neighbouring

parish, whose image dwelt in a wood, opposite a spring. The curate was

blind: a soldier in God's army, he had lost his sight in doing good

works, like a grenadier on the battlefield. The vicar administered

communion for his curate, because the latter could not have laid the

consecrated wafer upon the lips of the communicants. During this

ceremony, and from the depths of night, he blessed the light!

Our fathers believed that the patrons of the hamlets, John "the

Silent[93]," Dominic "Loricatus[94]," James "Intercisus[95]," Paul

"the Simple[96]," Basil "the Hermit[97]," and so many others, were no

strangers to the triumph of the arms which protect the harvests. On the

very day of the Battle of Bouvines[98], robbers broke into a convent

dedicated to St. Germanus[99] at Auxerre, and stole the consecrated

vessels. The sacristan went to the shrine of the blessed bishop and

said plaintively:

"Germanus, where wert thou when those thieves dared to violate thy

sanctuary?"

A voice issuing from the shrine replied:

"I was near Cisoing, not far from Bouvines Bridge; together with other

saints, I was helping the French and their King, to whom a brilliant

victory has been given by our aid: _cui fuit auxilio victoria præstita

nostro._"

*

[Sidenote: Fierce fighting.]

We beat the plain and pushed as far as the hamlets lying under the

first entrenchments of Thionville. The village on the high-road

crossing the Moselle was constantly being captured and recaptured. I

took part in two of these assaults. The patriots abused us as "enemies

of liberty," "aristocrats" and "Capet's satellites." We called them

"brigands," "murderers," "traitors" and "revolutionaries." Sometimes

we stopped fighting while a duel took place in the midst of the

combatants, who became impartial seconds: O strange French character,

which even passions were unable to stifle!

One day, I was on patrol in a vineyard; twenty paces from me was an

old sporting nobleman who banged the muzzle of his musket against the

vine-stocks, as though to start a hare, and then looked sharply round,

in the hope of seeing a "patriot" leap out: every one had brought his

own habits with him.